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3 Key Strategies To Enhance Small Business Success

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Small business success|3 Key Strategies To Enhance Small Business SuccessThe truth is most small businesses are currently fighting to establish themselves after facing a heavy blow from the Coronavirus pandemic. The virus saw many ventures close down while others sold out after failing to withstand challenges ranging from lack of finances, stiff competition, unskilled staff, and lack of disaster preparedness mechanism.

As the world moves towards the post-COVID-19 recovery phase, it is essential to take necessary measures to uplift this sector as it plays significant roles in the economy, such as helping tap and utilize local resources and employment creation.

The first step towards enhancing your small business success is realizing that your venture competes with other well-established businesses and serves the same customers. Moreover, don’t forget to implement these three key strategies that are crucial to your business success.

Be a Risk-Taker

It generally requires a risk taker to make it in life and more so in business. As a business person, you must be willing to get out of the comfort zone and make risky decisions. For instance, you will require making a substantial financial investment such as taking a loan to sustain your business.

Additionally, you will need to expand your customer base by reaching new markets and retaining your existing customers. All this requires hard work and taking risky actions in the unforeseen future.

Maintain Your Business Privacy

Stiff competition is one of the main challenges facing many small businesses in the 21st century. To counter this, keep your business rivals from knowing what is happening within your organization.

Most times, your competitors will use what is not working for you to their benefit. They will occasionally spy to identify your strengths and weaknesses and do their best to beat you at your lowest.

Therefore do everything possible to prevent information leakage by doing away with employees likely to betray you to your rivals and improve your venture’s cyber security service.

Additionally, you should also avoid gossip within the organization by developing and sticking to a formal communication model.

Have a Well Laid Out Business Plan

Knowing where you need to go and what is needed to get there is vital for the success of your business. Having a well thought out plan in your business makes this possible.

Moreover, a business plan helps you track progress and take necessary steps early to change the situation when things get out of hand. Through a business plan, one can also identify possible risks that may harm the business and prepare for them beforehand.

A plan will enable you to minimize the wastage of resources in the business. This is because a plan helps you stick to what is essential and devise effective ways of getting things done faster and in a more efficient way.

It requires hard work, commitment, self-confidence, and sacrifice to grow a small business to remarkable heights. The truth is many small ventures do not cross the third-month mark.
Despite this, you can succeed and build a name in the small business world by following the above vital recommendations.

How To Handle Employee Cyber Security Training

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | How To Handle Employee Cyber Security Training | Cyber Security, Business, Corporate

If your employees’ financial and personal information is leaked to intruders, your company may lose a lot. Most employees in various companies have fallen victim to phishing scams, causing great losses to the company. Unfortunately, cyber attackers evolve as technology changes and make their attacks even more sophisticated.

To shield your company from attacks, you need to conduct a compromise assessment and assess where it’s more vulnerable. Setting up complicated systems to protect your business is great. But if your employees don’t know how to use the systems, you’ll still be vulnerable. That’s why every organization should give their employees basic cybersecurity training. That way, attacks targeting social engineering and phishing scams will stay out of your business.

Here are some tactics for training your employees in cybersecurity:

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | How To Handle Employee Cyber Security Training1. Avoid Blame Games

When the news of a data breach gets into the ears of the company’s executive and other people, it’s easy to attach the fault to some employee who clicked the wrong link. Though it might be true that one of your employees may have fallen for an attacker’s trap, it isn’t advisable to blame them if they don’t have the right knowledge about such attacks. In fact, it may seem that the organization is dodging is the responsibility of training employees on how to keep its data and networks secure.

Instead of blaming the employees, you should develop a plan that’ll ensure every worker has the knowledge they require to prevent attacks. You should also encourage them to ask questions and set up a department that can address their concerns.

Training isn’t only about collecting your employees in some class and lecturing them on best practices, but it could also be sharing with them new threats through SMSs and pinning informational notices on their noticeboards and offices. That way, they’ll keep interacting with the information and enhance their knowledge of cybersecurity threats.

2. Have A Budget For Employee Training

While SMSs and notices can help inform your employees about threats, you may need to conduct a training to explain how to handle some complicated threats. Cybersecurity requires constant maintenance because new attacks are created daily and monthly. Therefore, conducting monthly training can be ideal for updating them on such threats.

According to experienced IT experts, people working in your organization are assets that need continual investment. If you don’t patch them regularly, they’ll be vulnerable. That’s why when planning for your yearly budget, you should include employee training. Securing your systems and data is just as essential as marketing your products and services. So it would be best to treat employee training with seriousness as you would treat marketing.

Furthermore, you need to use many approaches to keep your staff on top of the trends. That may need a mindset shift and not viewing an employee who opened a wrong link as a source of failure even after training them but recognizing that your training and security structure needs updating.

3. Prioritize Cyber Security Awareness

Being on top of trends doesn’t prevent your company from experiencing data breaches. According to Cyber Security Hub, companies like Toyota, Walmart, and Dunkin’ Donuts have experienced attacks in the recent past despite having sophisticated security systems.

If you think that your small enterprise is safe, you need to be very worried because a 2018 cybersecurity report by Ponemon Institute revealed that about two-thirds of small businesses were attacked within a year. The only way to keep your systems secure is always to enlighten your employees about cybersecurity news. That way, they’ll understand the frequency and volume of attacks and be alert throughout the day.

Though getting your employees aware of current events is vital, you shouldn’t flood their inboxes with many emails that may be sent directly to the archives. Instead, you can attach cybersecurity information in the emails or reports news section that you can customize. Also, including messages in the links you send to your employees can help them stay updated.

4. Train Them On Password Best Practices

Having password best practices in your organization is one way of developing a robust security plan. The only problem you may face is convincing your workers to implement it.

Strong passwords should have the following qualities:

  • Be Long Enough: Lengthy passwords are difficult to crack. That’s why IT experts recommend that you set passwords with at least eight characters.
  • Have Many Character Sets: Every character set you add enhances the complexity of the password and makes it difficult to penetrate. That’s why your password should have a lower case, upper case, symbols, and numerals.
  • Have Incomplete Words: There’s no doubt that common words are easier to remember. However, they make it very simple for an attacker to crack. So it’s advisable to use incomplete words.
  • Should Be Changed Often: If you keep on using the same password on many devices, it may be compromised. To avoid that, you should change your password after a smaller window. Setting a reminder can help you know when to change your passwords.
  • Shouldn’t Be Shared Across Accounts: Using similar passwords across accounts can make it easy for an enterprising hacker to obtain your information and use it on other websites. Fortunately, there are sites where you can key in your email to know if your password has been compromised.

To ensure that all your employees have complied with password policies, you can use password managing tools. These tools will generate memorable but strong passwords for every account that your workers use. They’ll also simplify the process of sharing passwords and allow the employees to collaborate remotely.

As much as training your employees on password policies is vital, you also need to complement their knowledge with other data protection policies. Don’t assume that they know and understand them, but remind them regularly through refresher courses.

That way, they’ll always be updated on policies and rules that they need to follow. Every time you hire a new employee, you should tell them about data protection regulations and inform them about the company’s cybersecurity policies.

Final Words

You can’t prevent cyber attackers from targeting your company’s systems, but you can try as best as you can to shield them. Training your employees on best practices can help you to minimize the chances of cybercrime immensely. Their knowledge of cybersecurity threats can make your company secure or a vulnerable target.

Top Considerations For Businesses’ To Staying Safe Online

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Cybersecurity, from a business’s technological point of view, is essential more than ever simply because it is more prevalent to have parts of the company that would need the use of the world wide web. From emailing different departments to accessing documents over the network or cloud services, to businesses that use the web for communication and engagement with clients and customers. In today’s standards, modern-day business ranging from all small, medium, or large scaled enterprises, will need to be even more vigilant and incorporate web technologies, along with safety and cybersecurity, as part of the business framework and will need to adapt protocols or procedures to make sure of workplace safety and that the company and its assets are protected.

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | Top Considerations For Businesses' To Staying Safe Online

Network administrators are usually the go-to department for medium and large enterprises and corporate entities, that will be in charge of keeping the workings of the internet of things functional and performing to the best standard for the company. Ranging from the creation of user accounts, privileges, and to monitor software and traffic coming into the business network, to port monitoring and implementing software installation and updates were needed on the different devices, around the business. But for a small business, cyber security may be more doable with being confident and its capability to deploy its own procedures that can help protect the presence of the company when being online.

Here are a few things to consider for any business whether small, medium or large, that would be generally good working practise to adapt within the online procedures, to protect the company from threats from online.

Firewalls

Firewalls are a security system that will monitor all the network traffic and the software that will run through the ports on the network. Generally, Firewalls are the first port of call when protecting the network from numerous types of attacks, but there are other things that can help reduce this risk even further.

VPN’s

Meaning Virtual Private Networks can be implemented to further the security of data transference across the network, especially if the business network needs to communicate to the wider web, which is untrustworthy, to complete tasks. Firewalls and VPS’s can come in software but also can be found in the router settings for some brands.

Virus Scanning Software

When a company has its work that is primarily sorted out on a device such as a PC, or even have the use of services such as emails and Voice Over Internet Protocol communications, it is usually a good idea to make sure that there is a Virus Protection element implemented, to minimise the chance for viruses or malware that can compromise your data and business logic, even data breaches.

PC Procedures and Conventions

The idea for password conventions and procedures is to educate and train company users and employees to have a decent basic understanding of what is to be expected by them, in order to contribute to the security of the company. Such as passwords not to be shared, and created with an uppercase, inclusive of numbers and a special character. That they should not be allowed to plug personal devices or even log into private email accounts while working on the companies PCs.

Being secure and safe online is an important focal point for many businesses, these points mentioned here are a few generic ones to be considered. What do you include as part of your way of keeping the company safe online? Let us know in the comments below.

Improve Business Security With These Core Hacks

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Business Security|Improve Business Security With These Core HacksWhen you are trying to run a modern company, it is important to do as much as you can to enhance the safety and security of the business. There are loads of things you can do that are going to help you make the most of this right now. The better you can protect your business the more important it is for you to be able to grow and develop as a brand, and there are plenty of ways of doing this.

You need to make sure you do as much as possible to think about how you can get this right, and there are loads of amazing ideas that will help enhance business security. One of the best things you can do is to focus on how your company is run in the safest and most appealing way. Here are some of the ways of improving business security and helping the company thrive and grow.

CCTV

Most modern businesses would do well to have some form of CCTV, and this is even more important if your company has premises where equipment and machinery is stored. This is something you’re going to want to protect, and you need to try to make the most of this right now. Come up with the best ideas that can play a role in helping you look after your business, and it’s pretty clear that CCTV is one of the best ways of being able to do this. Think about what it takes to work on this right now, and there are a lot of factors that play a role in helping your company improve its security.

Keycards

You have to try to make the most of doing as much as you can to take things to the next level. It is so important to integrate some sort of digital security procedures in order to make your business a bit safer and more secure. One of the best ways of being able to achieve this would be through an easy-to-use, on-site identity badge printer that can be used to create ID so that you know who is coming and going from the business, as well as being able to integrate keycards for entry and exit.

Cybersecurity

It is important to make sure you do as much as you can to look after the future and integrity of the business, and one of the best ways of doing this is to make sure you focus on cybersecurity, There are so many ideas that you need to work on that are going to allow you to focus on getting this right moving forward. Try to come up with some of the best ways of implementing cybersecurity in the business, and this is something you need to focus on right now.

Coming up with some of the best ideas to help you take your business security to the next level is really important because it is a great way of making everything easier for your business. There are a lot of factors that play a part in this, and you have to make sure you think carefully about the best ways of being able to improve your business security in the right sort of way.

How To Safeguard Your Company Data

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | How To Safeguard Your Company DataIt doesn’t matter what kind of business you run, you will need to take steps to safeguard your company data, and that of your customers, from cybercrime and data loss. Losing important business information or having it stolen by a hacker could easily spell the end of your enterprise altogether, and it will certainly have a negative impact on your reputation. Therefore, it makes sense to put in safeguarding measures to protect the information and yourself. Here are some ways to do it.

Back Up

Backing up your information is simple and effective. Although it won’t protect against an attack by a cybercriminal by itself, it will allow you to restore the potentially missing or corrupt information left in the hacker’s wake, or as a result of a system failure.

If you can restore the information then you can continue working, even if there are other problems that still need to be dealt with. Without a backup of your work, you may well lose everything and have no way of continuing your business at all.

The most important thing to remember about making backups is that you will need to use a reliable external source to do it. There is no point in backing up your information to another computer on the same system; this is not going to keep it safe. Ideally you should use the cloud as not only will the information be protected but you can access it from anywhere – this is perfect if you are unable to get to your office or if there was a fire, for example, that destroyed your computing equipment.

Use A Firewall

A firewall will give you an extra line of defence against cyberattack. It works as a barrier against any malicious software that you may have inadvertently downloaded. This barrier, when correctly installed, will ensure that the virus cannot reach the more vulnerable and important parts of your computing system, blocking it completely.

The idea is a simple one, but there are many different types of firewall and it can become confusing and even overwhelming when you start to look more deeply into it. Because of this, it is best to have IT services Birmingham find the right firewall for you and install it – that way you know you are protected.

Password Protection

It is possible to set passwords on some programs such as Adobe Acrobat and the Microsoft Office suite. This adds an extra layer of security so that only those who have the password are able to open the document.

You can even password protect entire folders and networks if you want to and feel that this would be a useful protective measure that will safeguard your company data. When you are choosing a password, it must be something unique that cannot be guessed easily; never use phone numbers or birthdates or names. For the best password, you should use a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. Although this will be harder to remember, it will also be harder to guess, so your information will be much safer.